“Green shoots” is a term used to describe signs of economic recovery or positive data during an economic downturn. The term “green shoots” is a reference to plant growth and recovery, when plants start to show signs of health and life, and, therefore, has been employed as a metaphor for a recovering economy.
In this case, it refers to positive developments in my body in the midst of chemotherapy treatments for cancer.
Initially I suffered extreme fatigue from the chemo – to the point where I was almost unable to sit upright.
Researchers urge governments to raise the legal age to purchase cigarettes to 22 years or higher as study finds it becomes less addictive and easier to quit as people get older. The research is presented at European Society of Cardiology (ESC) Congress 2023.
Photo by u0410u043du043du0430 u0412u0430u0441u0438u043bu044cu0435u0432u0430 on Pexels.com
In 2020, more than one in five people worldwide used tobacco. Tobacco kills up to half of its users. Smokers below the age of 50 years have a five-fold higher risk of developing cardiovascular disease compared with their non-smoking peers.The legal age to purchase tobacco is 18 years old in many countries but in some nations there are no age restrictions. It is estimated that nearly 9 out of 10 adults who smoke cigarettes daily first try smoking by age 18, and 99% first try smoking by age 26.
I have been writing about my experience with cancer since last November. I had surgery in January in which the top lobe of my left lung was removed. At my six month check-up in July learned the cancer had returned and I now had it on both lungs and elsewhere as well. A bleak outlook to say the least.
That’s why I wanted to share this picture with you. In the midst of my hospital stay my three grown children interrupted their busy lives to come visit their father.
On the left is my 55 year-old son, Andy. He is a retired Chicago police officer now living in Nashville. Next to him is my daughter Kate. At 28 years old, Kate trains medical personnel in the use of high tech medical equipment that her company manufactures. Kate now lives in Texas. My eldest, daughter, Kira, just turned 60. She creates window displays for a big board company.
Not in the photo, my ex-wife, Maribeth, Kate’s mom, also visited from Texas and brought me some home made cookies along with latte’s from Starbucks
As you can see they brightened my hospital room and my stay there. Life is good.
Radiation therapy, also called radiotherapy, is a type of cancer treatment. This treatment uses beams of intense energy to kill cancer cells. Radiation therapy most often uses X-rays. But other types of radiation therapy exist, including proton radiation.
To update you on my condition, when I went back for my six-month checkup after surgery, we learned that the cancer had returned and it as in both lungs. So we have to attack it again. I have just experienced five doses of radiation therapy. Don’t know which kind. So, what I have to pass on to you about the treatment is my experience – purely anecdotal.
In explaining the therapy to me they noted that it was very brief – ‘five minutes,’ also no side effects, no nausea. It sounded like a walk in the park.
As a non-smoking lung cancer survivor, I must confess to astonishment that anyone would continue to smoke afterwards.
Cancer patients who continue smoking after their diagnosis have a nearly doubled risk of heart attack, stroke or death due to cardiovascular disease compared with non-smokers, according to research published on World No Tobacco Day in European Heart Journal, a journal of the European Society of Cardiology.
According to the World Health Organization, there were more than 50.5 million cancer survivors worldwide in 2020.2 Study author Dr. Hyeok-Hee Lee of Yonsei University College of Medicine, Seoul, Korea said: “A cancer diagnosis is an extremely stressful life event, which often leads to significant changes in a person’s lifestyle. Smoking, in particular, is a health-related behaviour that can be heavily influenced by mental distress. However, little was known about the relationship between changes in smoking habits after a cancer diagnosis and the risk of cardiovascular disease—the leading cause of non-cancer-related death among cancer survivors.”
Lung cancer patients with moderate to severe depression are 2 to 3 times more likely to have inflammation levels that predict poor survival rates, a new study found.
The results may help explain why a substantial portion of lung cancer patients fail to respond to new immunotherapy and targeted treatments that have led to significantly longer survival for many people with the disease.
As a brief recap: I had lung cancer surgery on 11 Jan of this year. For the events leading up to it, check out my Page – My experience with lung cancer.
I am now in my fifth week of recovery. I naively thought that once I had the surgery, it would be all over. I could not have been more wrong.
I wanted to include this lovely card from the SuperAgers because it seemed so sweet and certainly lifted my spirits
The first few weeks home, I had almost no appetite, ditto on energy. The only exercise I was capable of was walking the dog three times a day. There was also a lot of pain in my chest. I needed painkillers for the first week. Additionally, I was told not to lift more than 10 pounds. Although one lobe of my left lung had been removed, I did not experience shortness of breath.
I have been recovering from lung cancer surgery since January 11 of this year. You can find details of my lung cancer experience here if interested.
My entire encounter with lung cancer has been marked by my ignorance at every step, from thinking that not smoking prevented me from getting it, to not realizing that lung cancer is a disease of the aged – and I am over 80 years old. Some 70% of lung cancer victims are over 50 years old.
This is the x ray of my lungs a week apart. The doctor could see some improvement.
Likewise, when I was approved for surgery I thought my life would return to normal afterwards. Wrong again, big time. I underwent major surgery in which part of my left lung was removed. Recovery will take weeks, if not months. I have to keep reminding myself that I am over 80 years old … not a kid.
So, here I sit, nearly four weeks after surgery. I am able to walk the dog three times a day, just under a mile each time. That constitutes about 90% of my exercise each day. Otherwise, I am on the couch reading or watching TV, at my desk on the computer, or, in bed resting or napping.
The bump I hit on the road to recovery is that I suddenly suffered from a severe cough. My cancer team feared that a problem had developed in my lung. I was called in to the hospital for a chest x ray. I confess that visions of a hospital stay danced unpleasantly in my imagination.
Turns out that my lungs are recovering very well and the doctor recommended some Mucinex, a non-prescription drug, for my cough.
So, the bump turned out to be minor. Whew. I am finding some relief from the Mucinex already.
Further on my recovery, in the first weeks, my appetite was as restricted as my energy. I would eat because it was time to eat, but only minimally. In the past week or so, I have begun to be able to snack again and I can also consume more at meal time. So, I have an uptick on the appetite scale.
Additionally, regarding my energy, in the beginning I was walking the dog pretty much on nerve because it was time to take him out. Most recently, I have actually felt some energy available to do the deed.
Finally, in the interest of full disclosure, I must mention the psychological aspect of my recovery. I do this, not to complain, but, possibly to inform any reader who may be experiencing or is about to undergo a major surgery and then need to RECOVER from it. After nearly a month of being home and only stepping outside to walk the dog, I think I am experiencing something on the order of being ‘stir-crazy.’
This is a good definition: stir-crazy (slang) Of a prisoner, mentally unbalanced due to prolonged incarceration. (slang, by extension) Restless, uncomfortable, or impatient due to inactivity or confinement.
To sum up, nearly four weeks into it, I feel that I definitely am making progress. My daughter who lives in Texas says that my voice even sounds stronger on the phone.
If an exclamation point and a question mark in the headline seem confusing to you, join the club, you are not alone.
A heads up here: I have written about my experience with lung cancer in a number of posts, all of which I gathered into one Page – My experience with lung cancer if you want to catch up.
I just had my first post-op visit with the surgeon who removed the tumor and part of my left lung on 11 January of this year. He said that there are currently no signs of cancer in my lung or system. That’s the good news – right now I am cancer free.
The picture is an x ray of my lung following the surgery.
After I met with my surgeon, I had a meeting with my oncologist. He gave me the not so good news – that the tumor removed was six centimeters which qualifies as ‘large.’ Because of that, there is a good chance that it left cancerous micro-organisms in my system that can trip me up in the days, weeks, months and years ahead. These cancerous organisms can be free to travel anywhere in my body to start another cancer attack.
So, while I may be cancer free at the moment, I need to guard against future attacks by the same organism. He recommended chemotherapy and immunotherapy in either order.
I confess to a great deal of ignorance about chemo. I have heard horror stories about side effects as well as simply after effects. I said that at this point I did not want to undergo chemotherapy.
Right now I am in the immunotherapy camp. The treatments and side effects seem less onerous. Also they actually use the body’s own immune system to do a better job finding cancer cells so it can attack and kill them. Chemotherapy kills fast-growing cells – both cancerous and non-cancerous.
This is day one of my new ‘after cancer’ life.
Anyone who has any suggestions or stories about folks in my situation and what they decided is welcome to share with me. I truly feel like a babe in the woods here.
I am writing this in late January 2023. My experience with lung cancer began in early November 2022. I have posted several times on it and rather than rehash those posts, I have collected them onto a Page entitled – My experience with lung cancer so you can go back to any part that may interest you.
The experience began in November and I had a ‘period of darkness’ that lasted eight weeks during which I knew that I had lung cancer, but had no idea how bad it might be. On December 20 I met my ‘cancer team’ and got a ton of information about cancer in general, my cancer, in particular, and my options going forward. They scheduled surgery for January 11. So, for more than two months, I lived with the idea that I was carrying cancer and now I might be getting free of it with the surgery.
Cut to today – late January. I have had the surgery and the upper lobe of my left lung was removed along with a larger than two inch sized tumor. I am now in RECOVERY. Having lived a relatively healthy life with very few serious encounters with doctors or hospitals, I really had no idea what to expect after major surgery. I thought, naively, that once I had the surgery I was done…. Not so.
Now, I have a much clearer idea. I have an incision in my left side through which the tumor and lobe were removed. The ribs needed to be separated for this to occur. So, when I was released from the hospital, 36 hours after the operation, I was given a prescription for painkillers and told to be sure to use them. As it turns out, the operation has left me with a really ugly scar on the left side of my chest (I’m doing you the favor of not showing a photo). Because of the surgical activity, my chest feels like a big guy wearing a Super Bowl ring punched my ribs several times. So, while I have a full range of motion with my arms and legs, my torso activity is highly restricted.
After 11 days, I am still taking the pain pills religiously. It hurts to turn my body in either direction.
The good news in all this, besides the fact that I think I am cancer-free, is that I am able to walk my dog three times a day. Walking was one of the recommendations upon my release. I don’t have a lot of energy, so the walks really make up the bulk of my exercise for the entire day. Also, I don’t have much of an appetite. I understand that is par for the course. I just have to wait this thing out one day at a time.
Besides walking, I was given an Incentive Spirometer which I use regularly throughout the day to build up my lungs.
So, nearly two weeks into RECOVERY, I have been enlightened as to the nitty gritty of recovering from major surgery.
Regular readers know that I learned that I had contracted lung cancer in the first week of November. After undergoing a number of tests, biopsies and scans, I got to meet my ‘cancer team’ on December 20. At that meeting I learned that the tumor in my lung was of a sufficient size that surgery was the best avenue of removal.
My daughter shot this picture of me after I was admitted to the hospital,
Just to back up a step, I want to recall my shock at learning that I was carrying a deadly growth in my left lung. Writing this blog about living a healthy life and pretty much doing everything in my power to accomplish exactly that, I didn’t expect anything of the sort. I don’t smoke. Since my diagnosis, I have learned that 15% to 20% of lung cancer victims are not smokers. So, my ignorance of that fact was costly. Also, lung cancer is very much a disease of the aged. Only about 10% of lung cancer cases occur in people younger than 50 years old. I am 82, another costly oversight.
First, I have to apologize to you for the long lag time in updates. One of my initial complaints when I first learned that I had lung cancer was that I kept having procedures, but never seemed to get any fresh information on my condition. Now, I see that I have not updated you all since December 22. Sorry. You can refresh yourself here: What you can learn from my lung cancer on my last post December 22.
The last thing I mentioned in that post was that my cancer team had noticed that the tumor was possibly spreading to a neighboring lymph node. So, they needed to do a further procedure – a bronchosopy – on me to confirm or deny that. If you want further details on ‘that procedure, ‘bronchoscopy” I suggest you Google it.
I then had to wait four more days to learn the results and if I qualified for lung cancer surgery.
I have now learned that there was no cancer spread in my lung and I do qualify for surgery.
On Wednesday, January 11, I will have surgery on my lung. The procedure is called VATS – Video Assisted Thoracic Surgery.
According to the American Society of Clinical Oncology, “VATS lobectomy for lung cancer is associated with less pain, fewer in-hospital complications and a shorter hospital stay…. Superior functional recovery continues in the post operative period with improved physical function, lower re-admission rates and no difference in disease-free and overall survival up to one-year.”
So, hopefully, I will not have a prolonged hospital stay. My surgeon said that barring complications, I may be able to go home the day of the surgery. Fingers crossed.
Lung cancer is the deadliest cancer in the United States and around the world. Many of the currently available therapies have been ineffective, leaving patients with very few options. A promising new strategy to treat cancer has been bacterial therapy, but while this treatment modality has quickly progressed from laboratory experiments to clinical trials in the last five years, the most effective treatment for certain types of cancers may be in combination with other drugs.
Fluorescence microscopy image of lung cancer cells stained with antibodies against proteins involved in cellular growth.
Columbia Engineering researchers report that they have developed a preclinical evaluation pipeline for characterization of bacterial therapies in lung cancer models. Their new study, published December 13, 2022, by Scientific Reports, combines bacterial therapies with other modalities of treatment to improve treatment efficacy without any additional toxicity. This new approach was able to rapidly characterize bacterial therapies and successfully integrate them with current targeted therapies for lung cancer.
I have spent the last dozen years writing about living a long healthy, happy life with your brain functioning well the entire time. Not a day goes by when I don’t read about some aspect of living a healthy life. I have taken courses in anatomy, exercise, sleep, nutrition to name only a few since starting this blog.
And yet, despite all my focus on health, if you had asked me about my chances of getting lung cancer, I would have said – very slim. I would have been wrong.
Here are some basic statistics about the disease. The average age for a lung cancer diagnosis is 70. Only about 10% of lung cancer cases occur in people younger than 50 years old. So, age is a risk factor that I had been unaware of – at 82 years old.
I last wrote about my cancer situation on November 18 in Booking my biopsy That was the last you heard about my experience with lung cancer. Sorry if I have kept you in the dark, but the fact is that I am also in the dark. I had the biopsy on November 28, but that seemed to only confirm that I, indeed, have cancer. They were able to give me no further details on my condition. Instead, I now have an appointment with an oncologist on December 20.
The one positive occurrence seems to be that I am booked for two scans, brain and body, to determine the extent of the cancer. So, it seems that they will finally be able to ascertain the extent of my lung cancer. My scans are booked for Monday, December 12.
Now you know everything I do about my cancerous condition. Sadly, not very much and not very positive.
I asked the surgeon who did the biopsy if the fact that I have been living an active, healthy life with a lot of physical exercise worked for me in this situation. She said that my healthy condition would make it possible for them to attack the cancer more aggressively.
That is the extent of what I know as of right now – more than a month after first learning that I was likely carrying a cancerous mass in my left lung.
As they used to say on the radio when I was a kid … stay tuned.
Last week I wrote about the unpleasant news that after a chest X Ray and a CT Scan, I likely have some form of lung cancer. If you want details, you can read that post here.
It has now been a week of dark shadowy uncertainty. When we got my CT Scan results, my doctor told me that they would call me to book a biopsy of my tumor. I waited for the call. The weekend came … and went. No call the following week. I finally sent a message on MyChart to my doctor that I hadn’t heard anything and was I supposed to have done something to get the biopsy scheduled. I received a message back with the phone number for the Radiational Intervention Department. Progress!
I phoned immediately and, of course, got a machine to answer. I recited my name and medical data along with my phone number with the message that I was calling to schedule a biopsy and they had my CT Scan. The machine assured me that my call was important and that someone would get back to me. The machine lied.
The next day, I phoned the department again and caught the same recorded message. I repeated my information. There was no call back.
At this point I was approaching seven days since my CT Scan with no ‘closure’ as far as finding out that nature of my likely cancerous affliction. I phoned my doctor and left a message that I had tried twice calling Radiational Intervention with no response.
Two hours later, Radiational Intervention called me. The nearest date for a biopsy is November 28. I booked it. They explained that I needed to get a COVID test with 72 hours of my procedure. So I booked that, too. I will be there at 1:00 p.m. for the procedure. They said that it would take about an hour to get into it and then I needed to stay there under observation for an additional two hours.
So, I may know on Tuesday, November 29, the condition of the likely cancerous mass on my left lung. Stay tuned ….
Wellness Secrets of a SuperAger 